Cron is used to execute scheduled commands. It acts as a task scheduler on Linux and UNIX systems which will execute commands at specified times set by the user. Cron has a great deal of customization and is often used on server environments where common tasks are run on a regular basis.
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26answers
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Reasons why crontab does not work
Many a time and oft, crontab scripts are not executed as expected. There are numerous reasons for that, for example: wrong crontab notation, permissions, environment variables and many more.
This ...
53
votes
4answers
32k views
25
votes
4answers
18k views
How are administrators supposed to read root's mail?
What is the Ubuntu way for system administrators to receive system notifications, which typically take the form of e-mail sent to the root account?
Examples of such notifications are the output of ...
6
votes
3answers
6k views
How can I setup a Mail Transfer Agent?
I intend to use mutt to send automated emails via cron or at with attachments to my gmail address when particular events happen on my Ubuntu server. Currently, mutt cannot send email to external ...
6
votes
4answers
2k views
What kind of harm there is from removing (purging) package apt-xapian-index?
I know you can't use Quick filter in Synaptic after purging apt-xapian-index, but is there something more severe?
I know there are some performance issues, when you have it:
...
59
votes
3answers
80k views
Where is the cron / crontab log?
I want to verify if my cron job is executing and what time. I believe there is a log for my sudo crontab -e jobs, but where?
I searched google and it I found references to look in /var/log ...
4
votes
4answers
4k views
Cron.hourly won't run
Ok, So I've made my script, I dropped it in /etc/cron.hourly then I chmod 777 the file but it won't run (automatically). If I manually run it, it works fine. Do I need to do anything else?
0
votes
1answer
396 views
Set server timezone but not working with crontab and phpmyadmin
TimeZone is not working properly
I am using linode server running ubuntu 12.04LTS. My Question is when i configured timezone by using dpkg reconfigure tz as IST ASIA/Calcutta. It shows correct ...
5
votes
4answers
5k views
Why does apt-get fail when automated with cron?
I'm trying to use cron to automate my system updates. You can see my crontab, commands, and resulting errors below.
When I run upgrades.sh as root, the script runs fine. When cron runs it, apt-get -y ...
3
votes
5answers
1k views
How to run cron job when network is up?
I have some anacron jobs which run daily. The scripts update local bzr and git repositories. Naturally these scripts need working network connections. I'm on a laptop and often wired and wireless ...
2
votes
2answers
307 views
How can I set up a php script to run via cron?
How can I set up a php script to run via cron
I've created a file in the cron.d folder with the username as the file name:
/etc/cron.d/username
Inside of username file I placed the following cron ...
2
votes
4answers
3k views
execute script after desktop loaded?
I want to execute bash script on startup that opens several terminals in different workspaces.
Script works just fine if I call it from terminal, but it doesn't work if executed from crontab using ...
0
votes
2answers
730 views
How to append text to file every morning?
I would like to append current date to text file every morning at 7am. if the computer is turned off I would like it to be executed after its turned on.
6
votes
5answers
6k views
What's wrong with my cron.hourly configuration?
Every hour I get an email with error like this,
Subject: Cron <root@supa> root cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
/bin/sh: root: not found
Contents of /etc/crontab is as ...
4
votes
1answer
88 views
Is it possible to use the 'screen' command to work with files on an encrypted home directory?
So I have an encrypted home directory, set up during install on a server running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I attempted to use screen in order to run a script that accesses the data in my home directory after ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
Why does my computer shuts down itself every morning at 6 AM?
My computer shuts down by itself at a specific time everyday 6:00am. I can't find what's causing it.
I'm a long time Windows user and just recently tried Ubuntu. So I don't know anything about Linux ...
2
votes
2answers
218 views
Is it possible to schedule the downloads required to upgrade?
I'd like to upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 but my ISP has a data-cap, limiting the amount I can download. Thankfully, traffic between 2am and 8am doesn't count towards this cap, but I'm seldom awake at ...
1
vote
2answers
88 views
Stop cron from mailing the user
I am facing an issue with Ubuntu server. I am running a PHP script using a cron job which executes every 5 minutes. This folder spool/mqueue is showing 112GB space. The scripts job is to fetch data ...
1
vote
1answer
436 views
cron.weekly does not run
I have a shellscript in /etc/myprog/myscript.sh that I would like to run every week. Therefore I created a symbolic link in /etc/cron.weekly:
root@ip-10-190-199-197:/etc/cron.weekly# ls -ltr
total 8
...
